Forgon wrote:My current solution is to reduce the number of transporters available
with Insane for the end of both Alpha and Beta to 3, so that units can
still be built in the following missions without breaking unit limits.
With a few extra checks, transporters could not be empty or loaded with
units that would exceed unit limit allowances.

Interesting idea. But at the end of Alpha mission, you have to reduce the transporter starts from 5 to 4. With the current master version, you can start 5 transporters. 4 are arriving in Beta 01, the fifth get shot down and you have to rescue your downed units in Beta 02. With your solution, it also makes sense to think about to make it possible that you rescue units that you put into the transporter. At the moment you get scripted units in Beta 02 no matter what units you put into the fifth transporter.

Forgon wrote:With this approach, only one issue remains: Overruling of unit limits
when rescuing units. I'm sure we all agree that this can be tolerated.

From my side, I agree that this can be tolerated. But we have still one more issue. In every away mission the transporter is count as a combat unit and you can use only 39 units. Only if you have 40 units already produced in the last non-away level before you can use 40. And in Beta mission from Beta 06 on you have 5 away missions in a row. So when you want to upgrade your units you have to fight with only 39 units. That should be fixed in my eyes.

Forgon wrote:Could you remind me what I have to watch out for in Alpha 10?

Alpha map.png (72.98 KiB) Viewed 613 times

At each of the points 1-5 will land 3 transporters each with NP cyborgs. First 3 at point one, then three at point two and so on. At the two green "X" you have to await ground reinforcements. Tracked Mantis Heavy Cannon tanks and Mortar units with a sensor unit. In the southeast corner, they will arrive after the second transporter has landed at point 1, in the north, they will arrive after the fifth transporter has landed at point 2. You have to destroy them all. Let one of the two sensor units alive so you will have enough time to prepare your units for Alpha 11.

[...]
From my side, I agree that this can be tolerated. But we have still one more issue. In every away mission the transporter is count as a combat unit and you can use only 39 units. Only if you have 40 units already produced in the last non-away level before you can use 40. [...]

Berserk Cyborg has already suggested a working patch to fix this, which
excludes transporters from unit counts:

During my testing, I found two more issues. As you can see on the picture below my trucks are repairing a repair facility from very far away. I don't know if that was intended but it is way too far away from where they can repair the repair facility. A saved game is attached, use alpha 06-08, wait a few seconds until the NP mortar damage the repair facility and then let truck group number one repair the facility.

you know that's kind of interesting, i wonder what specifically caused that, because as i understand it you can't change builders range like that since the range is hard coded, because I remember suggesting that the builders and the mobile repair units need a range increase but apparently Berserk Cyborg couldn't find a way to do it since the range is hard coded and can't be modded, well apparently that's not entirely true or this wouldn't happen, i know this is just a bug but I'm wondering if some further investigation might lead to a way to mod even hard coded values, obviously it would be a bit of a hack and the correct approach would be to un-hard code hard coded values so they can be changed by mods, but this might at least provide a temporary work around, until someone gets round to un hard coding those values.

Could you remind me what I have to watch out for in Alpha 10?

humm...... i can see alpha 10 being near impossible to complete with only 40 units particularly on insane because even with 18 lancers with experience attached to an experienced commander and supported by a near by repair bay I have difficulty stopping the new paradigm tanks because they are so dam heavily armoured i normally need 3 groups of units to do that mission 2 squads of lancers to cover the north and south approaches at points 1 and 2 and deal with there heavy tanks, and a squad of machine gunners on halt-tracks to chase down there cyborgs and light units that land at spawn points 3, 4 and 5.

I don't see how its possible to stop that many heavy tanks with so few units, especially if you are having to divert a whole bunch of those units to chase down there cyborgs and other light units, in that case you wont have enough fire power so you wont be able to kill them quick enough to prevent your units from being overwhelmed by weight of numbers since each of those heavy tanks have something like 4000 to 5000 health each don't remember the exact number just now I'd have to look it up again but i do remember that they are heavy body units on tracks with heavy cannons so they are basically the toughest units the new paradigm have now while that may not of been so much of an issue when the heavy cannon was underpowered with the balance changes making the heavy cannon nearly as powerful as lancers you are going to get crushed, if you try to take them head on with so few units.

now granted if you set up near point 3 and then wait for the new paradigm units from points 1 and 2 to converge then you need less units since you aren't trying to cover so much ground, but that presents it's own issues which is why i usually just set up 3 teams right by the spawn points so i don't have to do a lot of running around and i can just volley there tanks as they enter the map, which is the easiest and quickest way to do that mission, since tracked units are so bloody slow due to the fact that the engine upgrade do nothing because of the way they are implemented.

Talking of engine upgrades did anyone ever look in to the possibility of changing the way engine upgrade are implemented so that engine upgrade actually increase your units maximum speed, because at the moment they only increase the speed of your heaviest units and the speed increase is so miniscule that it make absolutely no appreciable difference.

also how goes the reimplementation of the old hold guard and peruse stances ?

One final thing where to you find the latest master these days ?, while i very much doubt I'll be able to run it, I do keep checking from time to time to see if the XP support has been sorted or not.

you know that's kind of interesting, i wonder what specifically caused that, because as i understand it you can't change builders range like that since the range is hard coded, because I remember suggesting that the builders and the mobile repair units need a range increase but apparently Berserk Cyborg couldn't find a way to do it since the range is hard coded and can't be modded, well apparently that's not entirely true or this wouldn't happen, i know this is just a bug but I'm wondering if some further investigation might lead to a way to mod even hard coded values, obviously it would be a bit of a hack and the correct approach would be to un-hard code hard coded values so they can be changed by mods, but this might at least provide a temporary work around, until someone gets round to un hard coding those values.

It was fixed a few months ago. There isn't any distance checking when the repair action (among other ones) is done itself and instead relies on the "moving to repair" action to get the unit there, and then when it gets close enough while moving, switches to the actual repair action, stops the unit, and starts repairing the structure. If that made sense. Of course, I never tested telling trucks to repair something from so far away, while secondary holding, so the wrong action was being set somewhere.

Talking of engine upgrades did anyone ever look in to the possibility of changing the way engine upgrade are implemented so that engine upgrade actually increase your units maximum speed, because at the moment they only increase the speed of your heaviest units and the speed increase is so miniscule that it make absolutely no appreciable difference.

As for engine upgrades, it's possible but very time consuming. The EB-Mod already does this (unique speed signatures for basically everything) and a ton of other cool things like merging multiplayer and campaign stats together. So tons of new bodies, propulsion, weapons, and the Mech borgs are available. And a special hyper aggressive AI that focuses on attacking and building defenses. I'm just going to use it a stepping stone, replacing camBalance, since it basically does everything we wanted to do anyway and more. I just have to get motivated enough to map out all the tech, per mission, and assign new tech arrays to the AI per mission and verify all research is available when it should be.